Emfuleni and service provider blame each other as parts of Vanderbijlpark left in the dark for days

A section of Emfuleni Local Municipality’s Vanderbijlpark, in the south of Johannesburg, has been plunged into darkness for seven consecutive days.

Residents are angry and frustrated at the troubled Emfuleni Local Municipality over the electricity woes.

Speaking to The Citizen, one of the residents, Louwtjie Britz, said the last seven days have been a nightmare for him and his neighbours.

“I was told its the BXC South Africa (BXCSA) smart meter box which has a problem but when we called the municipality from BXCSA, we were told they did not receive any complaint from affected residents despite producing proof of the calls that were logged.

“I have been calling since last week Monday and they have been promising to switch us back on at 8pm every day but as I speak to you today, the power has not yet been restored,” said Britz.

BXC is a prepaid electricity service provider in the area.

Smart meters blamed

Britz accused both the municipality and the smart meter contractor of not doing their job, stressing that they never experienced electricity problems before the new smart meters were installed in CE 1.

“I lost meat worth R4 000 due to lack of service delivery from both the municipality and the company contracted for the new smart meters.

“I don’t even know why we are paying for services monthly if there is no services rendered… I’m really disgusted in this municipality,” Britz said.

Other residents, who did not want to be named, having also been experiencing electricity challenges, say they have been experiencing low voltage on the electricity supplied to their homes.

The Citizen spoke to an employee from BXCSA who did not want to be named. They said Emfuleni was to blame for some of the electricity problems experienced by residents.

“When customers call us about complaints like cable faults and low voltage, we do report it to Emfuleni and Emfuleni takes over because the problem needs to be solved by Emfuleni.

“To our knowledge, there are no smart meter consumers that are without electricity due to a smart meter fault and what we know is that Emfuleni is busy with electricity cuts due to outstanding accounts.”

When contacted for comment, Emfuleni spokesperson Mphikeleli Msibi said as part of their revenue enhancement programme every house in Emfuleni should be metered.

“There is resistance in some of the areas, but it is the intention of the municipality to roll out meters across Emfuleni,” said Msibi.

Despite promises made to respond to all questions, Msibi had not done so by the time of publishing this article, saying he was still awaiting the responses from the municipality’s finance department.

Public participation process flawed?

Ward councillor for the Democratic Alliance (DA) Peter Verbeek says the smart meter issue dates back to 2011 when the council was led by Simon Mofokeng.

“We then had the whole debate about BXC South Africa who took the municipality to court, where they decided that there was a case against Emfuleni and BXC gave it to two sheriffs based in Johannesburg and the amount they could collect was more than R400 million.

“Many residents are against the smart meters from BXCSA because they strongly feel there was no proper consultation done with them,” Verbeek said.

In 2020, the Johannesburg High Court granted Emfuleni an interdict to stop the attachment and seizure of its various bank accounts by BXCSA.

ALSO READ: Court dismisses Emfuleni’s application to have bank account unfrozen

Verbeek says council will still have to decide on the future arrangement with BXCSA and the electricity smart meter process as a whole.

What has caused the outages?

Verbeek says some of the outages are technical as a result of old infrastructure that can no longer carry the heavy load.

“There is also a component in the outages of CE 1 and it has to do with this phase between BXCSA and Emfuleni where people are technically being moved over to BXCSA (some not knowing it), then going to Emfuleni before being told to go to BXCSA.

“This disjuncture between clarity, transparency and accountability of information between Emfuleni and BXCSA is also plunging several residents in the dark for days,” Verbeek said.

ALSO READ: Emfuleni mayor Sipho Radebe discusses service delivery challenges in his municipality